OMG... I Love The New Grabbing Unit

[NeoMorph]

It's soooooo cool. You can latch onto dead craft, leach their fuel and then de-orbit them using their own fuel. It's one part that I can see being used in SOOOOOO many differnent scenarios. Dead satellite that failed to open the solar panels in time? Shuttle up, grab it, give it some juice and open up the panels, release... FIXED.

I loved the Kerbal Attatchement System but this is going to make it even better.

Thanks Squad.

[malkuth]

It only it could latch to the ground.... Its the only thing I wished it had.

[lajoswinkler]

It allows fuel transfer? As good as that sounds, it's not realistic! I'd rather have a special part for that. The claw is for grabbing stuff, not transfering volatile chemicals.

It only it could latch to the ground.... Its the only thing I wished it had.

Your point of view would race towards the center of mass - somewhere in the core of Kerbin.

[DeathFromBelow]

Dead satellite that failed to open the solar panels in time? Shuttle up, grab it, give it some juice and open up the panels, release... FIXED.

Couldn't you have already opened them manually with a Kerbal on EVA?

[regex]

Couldn't you have already opened them manually with a Kerbal on EVA?

Yes, but THE CLAW

[_Aramchek_]

It can also save your crew from those pesky sudden ground deceleration events from a decent speed.

[cantab]

Well, I turned off debris in my new save anyway. Much though I love seeing it around, KSP is marginal on my PC and I love framerate more.

[Merinsan]

I haven't used it yet for grabbing asteroids, but I have used it to rescue Kerbals!

I landed on Minmus with enough delta-v to visit all biomes, and suck the moon dry of science. After the second biome, I accidentally hit spacebar, decoupling the crew pod from the rest of the ship.

I sent a rescue ship, with a claw under it, carefully got into position and latched on, then took off again and flung them back to Kerbin. I turned around again to pick up the remainder of the craft, so as not to leave debris lying around. Got it to 20k up, then let it crash down while returning to the space center. Best fun I've had in a long time!

[NovaSilisko]

Your point of view would race towards the center of mass - somewhere in the core of Kerbin.

Possibly create a hidden rigidbody at the point the claw grabs, mark it as kinematic or create a joint constraining it to the world, then attach the claw to that object. Depending on how the claw connects to other parts, that might work.

[timsfitz]

Anybody made a robotic arm with the claw yet?

[Superluminaut]

It only it could latch to the ground.... Its the only thing I wished it had.

Word

I was really looking forward to some cool landers. No more tipping over, or bouncing in low g.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Anybody made a robotic arm with the claw yet?

Sadly, no one has. .23.5 broke Infernal Robotics, so until it's fixed no one can.

[Kobymaru]

I finally got to build my scavenger! Since the beginning of Kerbal space travel, I have been cluttering my Kerbin Orbit with burnt out rocket stages.

In .23 I tried to build an ion scavenger using a Rockomax adapter and some landing struts as "claw", but it was almost impossible to align up to the center of mass, so it would always twist out.

So obviously the first thing I did was revisit that concept, put the stock claw on top, double the number of ion engines (4 now) and launch it up. I have been happily deorbiting 40 kYears old stages ever since.

Edit: here's my scavenger with a quad-ion engine doing its work

Edited April 4, 2014 by Kobymaru

[lajoswinkler]

Possibly create a hidden rigidbody at the point the claw grabs, mark it as kinematic or create a joint constraining it to the world, then attach the claw to that object. Depending on how the claw connects to other parts, that might work.

That should work. Then you could make a huge robot and say it's Katlas, holding Kerbin on his shoulders.

[cantab]

We know the game does already support fixing a ship to the ground, because we have Launch Clamps*. The claw or any other ground anchor could presumably work the same way.

*Assuming the launch clamps aren't simply implemented as extremely massive objects. But I don't believe they are.

[kurja]

Sadly, no one has. .23.5 broke Infernal Robotics, so until it's fixed no one can.

can't robotics be made just with the claw, it has a hinge of some sort I believe?

[RoboRay]

I don't think the planets actually have mass, at least, as far as the physics engine is concerned, since they are always on rails. If their gravity field was based on their mass, our own craft would create gravity. I'm sure gravity is just applied as an assumption of the patched-conics implementation. Assigning mass to the planets in the same way as it's given to parts would seem to serve no purpose.

So, latching onto a planet shouldn't make your view dive deep below the surface. As far as your camera viewpoint is concerned, the "craft's" center of mass hasn't moved.

Edited April 4, 2014 by RoboRay

[Dooz]

It allows fuel transfer? As good as that sounds, it's not realistic! I'd rather have a special part for that. The claw is for grabbing stuff, not transfering volatile chemicals.

Mabye it Pokes a Hole In whatever Fueline it Finds And then Vacuums it Into the Main Fuel tank And then Seals it Up.

Anyways The Claw has to Many possibility Docking Rovers With Simplicity On the Mun's surface?

[Twreed87]

It allows fuel transfer? As good as that sounds, it's not realistic! I'd rather have a special part for that. The claw is for grabbing stuff, not transfering volatile chemicals.

A vessel can transfer fuel between two tanks anywhere one it. Since the grabber makes it all one vehicle, then yes, it allows fuel transfer. The game doesn't take note of what parts are between the two tanks at all. You could create a vehicle that's just two tanks separated by an I-beam, and you can transfer fuel between it.

If they wanted to fix this, I think they'd have to make certain rules for which parts fuel can transfer through. It'd be more realistic, but also might be kind of a pain.

[StevenRS11]

A mod, station science I think, has a docking port that allows real docking but with no fuel transfer. Not exactly sure how they do that, but probably not hard. Just a simple tree traversal.

[Kruleworld]

It only it could latch to the ground.... Its the only thing I wished it had.

Yeah, that was the second thing i tried with it.... :-(

[RedKite]

The first thing i did with the Grabber unit was this :

I couldn't resist after remembering the claw in Toy story, that and the little green aliens. It almost seems like it was meant for them